Saturday Night Radio Drama - Arthur Quiller-Couch - A Pair of Hands

Tender tale tugs at the heartstrings with its touching description of the antics of the "most harmless ghost in the world." The pair of hands that show up in the house rented by Miss Poulton belong to a girl Margaret, who had died of diptheria at the tender age of seven. Ever since, her little hands appear every now and then to dust and clean the house with an almost obsessive desire to keep it free of infection. So unobtrusive and gentle is the dead girl’s presence that hers is the friendliest ghost. As Miss Poulton says of this sweet spirit: she "smoothed my pillow, touched and made my table comely, in summers lifted the heads of the flowers as I passed"

I listened to this one because I was curious to hear something based on a story by Arthur Quiller-Couch whose name I know mostly as an old editor of The Oxford Book of English Verse and as the author of  the lyrics of a few songs other students would ask me to accompany for student recitals.  It's not long but it's a change from my usual posting.

I can't find a cast listing and they didn't give the credits on this video.  I could swear that it's Judi Dench who played Miss Poulton, I don't recognize the other two voices but they've probably been on countless other BBC productions.

Second Feature - Stephen Wyatt - Net Suicide 

Net Suicide 

Gerard McDermott

Tracy-Ann Oberman

It's sort of a modern take on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story updated only without a happy end.  It seems kind of appropriate the week that the putrid manosphere has been so much in the news.  The play was written in 1997, even then it was obvious that there were really sick things going on on the net.   

Stephen Wyatt has written a lot of plays for both theater and radio,  here's a bit from an interview he did where he compares the two media.

You’ve written a lot of work for radio. How does it compare to writing for theatre?

I think they’re very different forms. I actually think there is slightly too much radio drama that is just like stage plays. The two things that I really like about radio is that you can do subjects that in practically any other medium might be thought a bit esoteric or obscure. And the other thing I like is the freedom from any form of naturalism. You can create quite a heady, slightly disturbing atmosphere in which you never quite know what is real and what isn’t. And I think that’s something that radio can do really, really well.

Conversely, what does theatre give you that radio doesn’t?

What I’m looking forward to, going back into theatre, is that very direct contact with an audience, that – sometimes for good, sometimes for ill – they’re in there with you. And even if there are only five of them, you know what they’re feeling. That is, of course, something that you don’t get from radio.